Before Midnight

Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) first met in Before Sunrise (1995) during a stopover in Vienna. They planned to meet again soon, but that reunion didn’t happen until nine years later in Before Sunset (2004), during Jesse’s book-tour visit to Paris. Now, after another nine years, they are a couple with twin daughters, vacationing in Greece (in Before Midnight). In writer-director Richard Linklater’s latest installment, Jesse is now a somewhat successful novelist, living in Europe with Celine and their daughters, and Celine is a somewhat frustrated Paris-based environmental activist. In the course of the three European interludes recounted in these films, Celine and Jesse have moved from the chancy freedoms of youthful romance to the conflicted passions of a not-quite-disillusioned adulthood. The latest has some sorrow in it, but that seems to make the comedy and the romance count for even more. Pageant Theatre. Rated R.